[bignaj]

It sounds like you have a very firm background in the Unix/Linux world but you have no idea what you're talking about when it comes to Windows-based development. For reference: I'm primarily a Unix/Linux developer but I work for Microsoft so I know what VS is about too. I understand what you're trying to say but it weakens your argument when you clearly haven't evaluated both sides. It sounds like you don't know how GNU Emacs was developed either -- the GNU version of Emacs was developed not by Scrum or Agile or "Waterfall" but by Richard Stallman's neckbeard in the MIT AI Lab...

[dschiptsov]

There was a link to Stallman's emacs paper back from 80s. Have you read it?)

The "miracle" of Emacs in that it has a very powerful DSL which uses proper abstractions - buffers, paragraphs, blocks, strings, fonts, characters etc. embedded into a Lisp. Thus it is a thoroughly programmable (not just extensible) editor.

It is quite beneficial to get familiar with ideas and design decisions behind Emacs, especially in the age of Java and copy-paste based coding.